Following a period of isolation at the start of the Lockdown, Adam Caruso met host Matthew Blunderfield online to discuss teaching at ETH Zurich, the work of Pierre Huyghe, and the series of monographs on lesser-known Modernist architects he co-edits with with his partner, Helen Thomas.
"[When we started our practice] we were really interested in the syntax of architecture - how you make a brick wall, how you make an opening - and we believed that the syntax of architecture held within it the culture of architecture. And the reason we concentrated on that rather than the semiotics of architecture is that we didn’t believe so much in a shared language [for architecture to speak symbolically]. We live in a society that’s diverse and globalised, and I’m trying to find positive ways of engaging with those things”
Image: Pierre Huyghe After ALife Ahead Skulptur Projekte Münster, 2017
© flickr / stephane333
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In conversation
Valerie Verhack with Adam Caruso and Freek Persyn
Live-stream from Leuven, Belgium
8 April 2021
Museum Leuven's curator Valerie Verhack in conversation with Adam Caruso and Freek Persyn of 51n4e architects, part of a series of events around the museum's retrospective of the work of Thomas Demand.
Adam Caruso participated in the 2020 Bauwelt Kongress, with a lecture entitled 'What is it Worth?', on reading the city and speculating about what its future might hold. The lecture will be followed by a conversation with Kaye Geipel and Lina Ghotmeh.
Adam Caruso contributes an essay to the Autumn 2020 issue of Superposition, discussing the modernities of Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer’s ADGB Trade Union School, and Jony Ive at Norman Foster's Apple Headquarters seen through the lens of Andreas Gursky.
To celebrate its anniversary, the Heong Gallery has created a video looking back at the five years since its transformation from an Edwardian stable block into a public gallery showing modern and contemporary art.
Adam Caruso contributes an article to the October Issue of Domus, outlining how on the failure of architecture to address the imbalances of contemporary life has motivated him to look again, in practice and with students at the ETH, at the ideological and programmatic promises of modernism.
Teaching
ETH Zurich Seminar Week: What is Next?
New Material Developments
Studio Adam Caruso, ETH Zurich
20 October 2020
with Marlise Blaser, Katharina Lehmann, Summer Islam & Paloma Gormley
Adam Caruso will give an online lecture entitled, 'What Future for the City' as part of the 11th DAAD festival in Bratislava, Slovakia. The lecture will be at 20.00 (CET) and will be followed by a conversation with Architect Henrieta Moravčikova. The festival runs from 26 October to 1 November.
with Lukas Hug & Emi Lorincz
Teaching
ETH Zurich Seminar Week: What is Next?
Measuring Space
Studio Adam Caruso, ETH Zurich
22 October 2020
with Matthias Vollmer, Johannes Rebsamen, Markus Tretheway & Jürg Pulver